Re: dpkg-buildpackage now reorganizing debian/control Depends field??
Hi,
On Thu, 21 Feb 2008, Kevin B. McCarty wrote:
> I've just noticed that packages I've built recently have had the list of
> Depends reorganized into ASCIIbetical order in the generated binary
> .debs. I guess this was the next logical step after having dpkg-dev
> re-order Build-Depends internally (as was discussed in #457151).
There's no "next logical steps", it was done at the same time.
> In some cases, particularly when the Depends can be satisfied by
> different sets of alternatives, this change could have the effect of
> changing the packages actually pulled in by apt-get or aptitude. I will
> be happy to post a couple such examples -- one hypothetical, one real --
> if requested. (They are a bit long so I'm not including them in this
> email.)
I can understand it might change the list of packages pulled, but both set
are supposed to work since that what dependencies are expressing. If you
have additional restrictions, you'll have to express them more explicitely
instead of relying on the internal ordering that apt-get/aptitude uses to
parse the Depends field.
> I would like to re-iterate the statement of Colin Tuckley at
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-toolchain/2008/01/msg00018.html
> to request that in the future, it would be very nice if dpkg maintainers
> (and everyone else, of course!) could warn developers in advance when
> new features may cause unexpected changes in Debian package behaviors.
The problem with "unexpected changes" is that they are "unexpected"
and it's thus difficult to give fore-warning. I would have gladly
communicated more if I had somehow expected those problems. :-)
That said this new behaviour is not particulary new. It's been in unstable
since the 19th november 2007. And we haven't seen major breakage in the
mean time.
Thus ...
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Otavio Salvador wrote:
> Please, revert this change.
No. I don't see any good reason for that:
1/ I have yet to see a major breakage due to that, the worst has
been changed dependencies on a built package due to choices of other
alternatives in ORed dependencies of build-dependencies
2/ Reverting the change in dpkg will not change the order of
dependencies/build dependencies in the thousands of packages built
since november.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
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